Survey: Top Causes Of Unhappy Malaysian Employees

KUALA LUMPUR: JobStreet.com’s recent survey conducted in July 2016 that drew 5,256 respondents across different age groups, genders and education levels from various industries in Malaysia suggest there are twice as many unhappy employees as there are happy employees who love their jobs.

Results found that more than half of them, at 52% are unhappy and feel disengaged within their roles, some even to an extreme degree of discontentment as they rated their job happiness a 1 on a scale of 1-11, where 11 represents extreme satisfaction. Twenty-three percent feel neutral, while only 25% are happy and have a sense of appreciation for their jobs.

After further investigation, the leading cause of dissatisfaction is due to ‘management and leadership team’ emerged as the main reason employees are unhappy with their jobs.

Meanwhile, the respondents believe that ‘opportunities for career development’ is another contributing factor, followed by ‘boss or immediate superior’.

The survey also found that many employees feel their current state of gloom will not change within the next 6 months.

29% of these employees believe that the only way to overcome and muddle through the situation is by finding a new job. Meanwhile, 25% of them are willing to stay if they get a salary increase.

Chook Yuh Yng, Country Manager of Jobstreet.com stated that management teams are responsible for leading and motivation their workforce.

Organizations must invest in training and development courses for their managers and work on its employees in a sequence that is top to bottom, because when a good management team is formed, happy employees will follow.